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After the war ended, Sam Guarnieri’s Navy ship docked in Australia, where he and his shipmates were greeted like heroes by their grateful allies.

“The people were so glad to see us. We all were very proud,” Guarnieri said. “They glorified us. They paid homage to us. They loved us.”

That high praise continued everywhere U.S. troops went, especially when they returned stateside.

“The doors were wide open for us,” Guarnieri said. “I remember one time, I was at a bar. Someone made some kind of noise that sounded like a bomb and I fell off the stool. These people took me to their house and gave me a hot meal.”

He thinks the glory was deserved for those who answered the call to war.

More than 70 years later, Guarnieri described just one of his experiences at sea in the Pacific in 1945, reflecting back to tell the story as if it was just unfolding.

Guarnieri remembers manning his weapon while on the lookout for enemy submarines, boats and planes.

He thinks he sees a submarine periscope rise above the water and trail his boat. He tells the ship’s signalmen to deliver an ultimatum via Morse code: surface or else.

“What happened is they submerged, took off and we didn’t see them anymore,” Guarnieri recalls. “Now whether it was a Japanese submarine, or what, maybe they didn’t have any more torpedoes left.”

The Japanese submarine fleet often made sailors nervous. On that day, Guarnieri’s alertness might have scared off an attack.

“My main job was to make sure my gun was cleaned, ready to fire and was maintained properly at all times,” Guarnieri said.

Only on a few occasions did he have to fire at Japanese airplanes and he was never quite sure if he hit his target.

“It was pitch dark at night. You couldn’t see. We had to use infrared glasses, eyewear to see at night. With infrared, you could see better,” he said.

Guarnieri was aboard his ship during the final days of the war and learned about developments on radio broadcasts.

“They said they bombed Hiroshima and all that, and the destruction was a lot. They dropped another a couple days later at Nagasaki. And that ended the war. The Japanese said they surrendered,” Guarnieri recalls hearing. “We had a celebration on board the ship. Hollering and screaming and yelling and drinking and dancing and all that kind of stuff. We celebrated.”

Guarnieri said it was a collective effort by people of his era that enabled the Allied forces to win the war.

“That generation was a generation where people had to get together and work as one. There’d be no two ways about anything. When something needed to be done, we all did it together and that was our job -- to do what’s right to do. And we did a good job,” Guarnieri said.

It’s a good feeling looking back, he said.

“I can’t believe that I am even 89 years old now, or I’m gonna be anyhow,” he said during an interview in August before his Oct. 10 birthday. “That time went by so fast. Knowing what we went through with the war, sometimes I think back, and people say World War II, you were in that boy? When you’re in there, you did it because you wanted to do it. It was an honor to be there. You were in it fighting the enemy. And you had no fear. As a young man, there was no fear. When you’re 17, 18, 19 year sold, 20 years old, there is no fear.”

SAM GUARNIERI, 89, OF PITTSTON TOWNSHIP

U.S. Navy, Pacific Theater

Battleship gunner

Interview date: August 21, 2015

Guarnieri worked at the Tobyhanna Army Depot in the electronics department, assembling communications equipment. He retired in 1977. He and his wife Eleanor were married for 48 years before her death in 2000. He has two daughters and four grandchildren.

At age 89, San Guarnieri still serves his fellow veterans. He volunteers in an honor guard from the Pittston area that performs military services at veterans’ funerals like the gun salute. “It’s a tremendous feeling. Some people just come over and give us a hug and say, ‘Thank you so much.’ I tell them, ‘It’s an honor. He served us and he’s a brother in arms with us,’” Guarnieri said.

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